


I Believe In All the Dreams

by goldfishtobleroneandamitie



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, cw: abuse, cw: alcoholism, cw: mentions of suicide, none of this is graphic or anything but it's all in there so, runs the gamut from angst to fluff and back again, this actually just got way out of hand
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 12:00:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfishtobleroneandamitie/pseuds/goldfishtobleroneandamitie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He believed in all the dreams: railroads, the suppression of suffering in surgical operations, the electric telegraph, the steering of balloons. He was little dismayed, on the whole, by the citadels built up on all sides against the human race by superstitions, despotisms, and prejudices..."</p><p>A series of snapshots of Combeferre's life, from age seven through college, set against Boublil's lyrics. Originally written as a birthday gift for opabine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Believe In All the Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opabine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opabine/gifts).



 

 _Look down, look down_  
 _don’t look him in the eye_  
  
Combeferre’s seven when he realizes his parents don’t have a normal relationship. He’s seven when he first sees his father actually push his mother—it’s in the kitchen, she’s talking quickly and loudly about something he doesn’t understand— _bond trades—_ and his father swigs from a tall glass bottle of amber liquid, sets it down, and shoves her into the island. She bounces off and stumbles, then catches sight of her son in the door and screams for Annette to take him away. As his nanny picks him bodily and carries him to his bedroom, he makes no sound, colorless eyes fixed on his mother in the door, turning to face his daddy with his bottle once more.

_Five years for what you did  
the rest because you tried to run_

He’s fourteen when he finds out his father isn’t his father. He’s doing blood typing for senior-level biology (having taken every other class offered online and over summers), and decides for fun to test his parents’ blood as well. He gets blood off his father’s razor from when he cut himself that morning. Combeferre is AB, and his mother’s medical records inform him that she is O, so he redoes the test four times and draws eight different Punnett squares before reconciling that there is no way the man he calls his father can be his sperm donor.

He does not confront his mother with shouts or accusations, only hands her the results from his science experiments, sits across from her, and waits. It’s only four, so his father—father figure, rather—has not come home yet. Good thing, too, since his mother clams up when the man comes home for fear of igniting his wrath. In the intervening years, his father’s graduated from shoves to open-handed slaps, even giving his son a black eye the one time Combeferre had spoken when the older Zachary was in his cups. He’s sure he would have been a quiet child by nature, but he speaks hardly at all now. He has no reason, has never been given incentive to open his mouth. So he absorbs information like a sponge, turns in brilliant essays and A+ multiple choice tests, but volunteers very little in class.

His mother’s eyes widen and fill with tears, and he explains softly that he didn’t mean to make her upset; he only wants to understand why. The truth comes out bit by bit—that his father is in fact his uncle, having married his mother after his biological father’s untimely death four months before his wedding—to another woman. Combeferre is a bastard in a double sense of the word—that his parents never married, and that he is the product of an unfaithful union. His father—his uncle—the man he’s been living with for fourteen years is his mother’s savior, and the relationship he’s observed between them, that begins and ends with Zachary Combeferre Sr. firmly in control at all times, enforcing the dynamic with condescending words and harsh hands, is the price she’s paid for social standing.

It’s that night that first gives him a drive beyond pure ethics and theory to help the helpless and support those who cannot support themselves.

_Never forget the years, the waste._   
_Nor forgive them_   
_for what they've done._   
_They are the guilty – every one_

He absorbs this information silently, then stands up. He touches his mother on the shoulder, rubs her hand as her thin fingers clench around his own hands that are too big for the frame they’re attached to, then pulls away, gently but implacably. He returns to his room, leaving her at the dining-room table, to finish his homework. When his father returns that night, he greets him quietly as usual, and absolutely nothing changes. 

After that adventure, he does very little for fun anymore. He throws himself into numbers because they are immutable and do not lie, only express a truth of the world that will not change. He develops a love for history, for philosophy, because dead writers cannot change the future and cannot change how he sees the world unless he allows them to. They write with passion of freedom, of self-expression, of self-determination, and of liberty and justice for all, and he devours their words because he is forbidden to watch television, has a prescribed curfew of 8PM on weekends, his mother is terrified of her husband and he has never been tucked into bed by anyone except Annette.

And every evening he looks his father in the eye across the formal dining table, eyes that need no correction—unlike Combeferre’s eyes that he knows are distorted through thick lenses, eyes that are a muddy brown that, in conjunction with his wife’s amber, could not have produced the boy he calls his son’s gray, as he talks conservative politics and business with houseguests that Combeferre _knows_ can feel the coldness between them, but not fathom why.

 

 

_They find the mark of Cain_   
_In their eyes I see their fear_   
_`We do not want you here.''_

* * *

 

_Come in, sir, for you are weary  
And the night is cold out there_

Is it a surprise, then, given the coldness that pervades his house, that he makes his home somewhere else? He meets Courfeyrac when they share a calculus class sophomore year and the Irish boy manages to make trigonometry sexual and Enjolras the year after in Comparative Government and Politics—given that he quotes Baudrillard, the same book that Combeferre’s reading that week, it’s inevitable. The three boys snap into place like a magnetic puzzle.

_Though our lives are very humble  
what we have, we have to share_

When they walk down the hall, Enjolras leads, looking like a marble statue; Courfeyrac on his left, bouncing to his own internal music and flirting with everything that moves; and Combeferre on his right, speaking quickly about which of their co-chaired clubs is meeting after school, or how many detentions Enjolras has received for spouting “disruptive rhetoric” in Philosophy. They become so much of a cohesive unit that others, teachers and peers alike, consider them incomplete individually when one of the group is missing. Despite their drastically different personalities, they complement each other; their senior English teacher says it best, calling them the “chief”, the “center”, and the “guide”. Combeferre feels a warm flush when he hears this, and silently (as in everything) vows to be worthy of the title.

_There is wine here to revive you  
There is bread to make you strong_

Enjolras’s home life is like Combeferre’s except less cordial, but Courfeyrac lives with his mother, father, and sister in a house that exudes warmth and light despite being approximately the same square footage as Combeferre’s (admittedly palatial) entrance hall. Combeferre stays out past his curfew doing homework there, fed to bursting from Mrs. de Courfeyrac’s dinners, and grows to nearly six and a half feet. He’s approached for the lacrosse team but turns it down in favor of academic decathlon with Enjolras, and lifts weights with Courfeyrac so he can keep eating like he’s fourteen and so Courfeyrac can pick up girls (and boys, he admits confidentially to the other two when they’re seventeen).  When his mother chucks a crystal bowl at his father’s head and runs out the door three weeks before his high school graduation, Combeferre shows up at Courf’s door at two AM and sleeps there until they all leave for college the next August.

_There's a bed to rest till morning,  
Rest from pain, and rest from wrong_

That summer, Courfeyrac’s mother slowly but inexorably pulls the boy she now calls her son out of his shell for good. He tells her of nights spent buried in his books, determinedly ignoring the bitter tears from down the hall or the _chink_ of glass on glass from the study; how he cried, one of the few times he ever has, when Annette was fired the day after his twelfth birthday; how he hadn’t had friends because he hadn’t _talked_ until Courfeyrac had dragged words out of him in high school. He tells her how happy he is now that he has them, and how angry he is that he’d missed out. He does not cry, he _doesn’t,_ but if there’s moisture on Bridget’s shoulder when he pulls away and his glasses are misty, she doesn’t mention it.

There is catharsis that day, and he leaves the gated community that he lived in for seventeen years for the last time with his boxes of clothes, knowing that he isn’t leaving home at all. That comes later, when he and Courf and Enjolras pile into Enjolras’s Prius and pull out of the tiny yellow house’s driveway, and as he watches the little family that’s adopted two more sons wave, his glasses aren’t misty at all; they’re unabashedly wet.

 

 

_And remember this, my brother,_   
_See in this some higher plan._   
_You must use this precious silver_   
_to become an honest man._

* * *

 

_Have I fallen so far,_   
_and is the hour so late_   
_that nothing remains but the cry of my hate_

When Combeferre received his letters from universities at the beginning of April, he gets into Yale, Princeton, UMass, Rice, Amherst, and Northwestern. He is rejected from UConn, Harvard, and University of Chicago. Enjolras gets into Harvard, Boston University, and Amherst, and is rejected from Yale and Northwestern. Courfeyrac is rejected from Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Northwestern, and gets into UMass, UConn, and Amherst.

They all send in their Amherst acceptance letters from Courfeyrac’s mailbox at the same time.

There isn’t even a question, not really. It’s the one school they’ve all gotten into, and it’s a good one. They have Political Science for Enjolras, Philosophy and Biochemistry for Combeferre, and Economics for Courfeyrac. When Combeferre calmly informs his parents of his decision, his father murmurs something cutting about settling, but signs the papers his son places in front of him without argument.

_The cries in the dark that nobody hears,  
here where I stand at the turning of the years?_

As he leaves that house, that house with no soul and no warmth, populated by a father who went from distant to downright abusive and a mother who went from weak to despondent, he feels no regret. Enjolras is waiting for him at the end of the drive, and when he asks Combeferre if he’s all right Combeferre looks him right in the eye, quirks his lips into a grin, and says directly,

“Let’s go.”

_He told me that I have a soul,  
how does he know?_

These two men have changed Combeferre for the better. Enjolras has taken all his organization, his ability to herd, and helped him channel it into becoming the best producer of this mockumentary that they call their lives that it could have. Courfeyrac’s done the same, but he’s mainly honed the caring instincts by getting into scrapes.  Courfeyrac loosens him up, helps him throw his head back and laugh till his stomach hurts, and Enjolras reminds him that it’s all right to not need to. Enjolras has never been anything other than accepting of Combeferre, that he doesn’t speak unless it’s needed and he’s more likely to begrudge a smile than boom a laugh (perhaps he just appreciates that Combeferre lets him pontificate). Both of them acknowledge that their scarcity makes his smiles, his laughter, exponentially more precious.

_What spirit comes to move my life?_  
 _Is there another way to go?_  
  
So they embark on this journey together with direct goals in mind—to change the world, how else? But without real parameters on how to get there. So they drive down the road much like they wandered down the hall in that petty high school, with Enjolras leading, Courfeyrac bouncing, and Combeferre guiding because the GPS is broken. When they pull in front of their dorm at Amherst, with its miraculous three-man suite dorm room, they know that this is where their story really begins.

So it is here, then, does ours as well.

* * *

 

 

_At the end of the day you're another day older  
and that's all you can say for the life of the poor_

College, even if it isn’t Harvard or Stanford, is _hard._ For the first time, Combeferre’s struggling to make A’s (it doesn’t help he’s logistically a junior from AP courses) and the fact that Enjolras is trying to organize an activist group on campus—something Combeferre can’t fathom him doing without his guide—means that Combeferre’s sleep patterns are becoming severely truncated. This doesn’t even take into account that Courfeyrac’s found the party scene on campus and has taken his freedom from his parents as license to freely experiment. (Enjolras and Combeferre have instituted an eleven-PM lock-the-door rule).

So more often than not one of them comes back from a test, class, or extracurricular, flops on the bed, and goes straight to sleep. Combeferre has become quite proprietary of his bed, and extremely proud of the fact that he can go from alert to hibernation in under five seconds. He’s also rather jealous of his pillows, but isn’t above chucking one at Courf while still snoring if he’s being unnecessarily loud (which is always).

_It's a struggle, it's a war_   
_and there's nothing that anyone's giving_   
_one more day standing about, what is it for?_   
_One day less to be living._

They’ve had a lot of setbacks. Combeferre is making a C in his first-semester Chemistry, Courfeyrac has some unsettling red bumps in uncomfortable places, and Enjolras has had a lot of difficulty finding a faculty advisor for the group he wants to set up. He seems incredulous that there isn’t more support, and when Courf points out grumpily that it’s not like Enjolras is exactly an easy taskmaster, and Combeferre doesn’t jump in to smooth things over fast enough—he’s nearly asleep on his keyboard—it devolves into a shouting match that brings the RA down the hall, accompanied by a sleepy-looking girl asking if they wouldn’t mind _please_ quieting down?

 _At the end of the day there's another day dawning_  
And the sun in the morning is waiting to rise  
  
When they get over their confusion at this feminine creature’s appearance at their door (it’s a boys-only dorm and freshmen don’t get a lot of leeway in bringing acquaintances back), the “girl” introduces himself as Jehan and tells Enjolras he has the best hair he’s ever seen. The compliment goes unnoticed, however, as Enjolras for once in his life can’t do much but stare, dumbfounded. Combeferre doesn’t blame him. The tiny boy (or tiny to Combeferre, which could mean anything under six feet) is the most colorful thing he’s seen in his life. He’s wearing floral pajama pants (do those even _exist_ in men’s sizes?) underneath an XXXL Amherst hoodie, and he has more ribbons in his elbow-length auburn hair than Michael Phelps has medals. On his feet are a pair of giant fuzzy Dalmatian slippers.

They all agree, solemnly, to keep it down, and Jehan flits away, entering a room catty-corner to their own and waving to them carelessly as he shuts the door.

The three of them stare at each other for a moment, standing just inside their door, then silently go to their respective beds and remain quiet the rest of the night.

_Like the waves crash on the sand  
like a storm that'll break any second_

After that chance meeting, things start looking up for all of them. Courf’s STD test comes back clean, and he gets a job as a health counselor at the local LGBT center. Combeferre’s able to work out a deal with his Chemistry professor, and manages an A- in the class. Enjolras gets hold of the Dean of the Political Science department, Professor Lamarque, and the elderly woman agrees in a heartbeat to back his activism venture as long as all she has to do is sign off on gathering space.

They put up flyers for a Political Discourse meeting the next day, and their first meeting is perfectly respectably attended. Combeferre knows that as soon as people hear Enjolras speak they’ll be spellbound, just as he was. Some people, like Courf, have a gift for making people feel at ease. Some, like himself, are gifted with the ability to organize and direct. And some, like Enjolras, are born to lead. The meetings after grow steadily in size until they have to move off campus, into the Café Musain. The first meeting there is attended by Jehan, who aside from the lack of Dalmatian slippers appears to not differentiate between sleepwear and awake-wear. He flutters his fingers at the three of them as he scribbles in a small notebook, and judging by Courfeyrac’s widened eyes the beflowered boy is going to be added to their group whether he likes it or not.

Thankfully, he does—he approaches them after Enjolras alights from his podium and compliments his “revolutionary passion”. He’s present for every meeting thereafter, and by the time he knocks on their dorm room door three months later, shyly asking Combeferre for math help, he’s firmly ensconced in his niche. Their threesome becomes a foursome while barely flexing. Jehan does not interrupt the dynamic, only adds to it. He has a gift for editing on the fly, and lends Enjolras some help with turn of phrase when he edges on preachy.

Jehan enthralls Courfeyrac from the start with the fact that he can speak French—his parents are from Marseilles—and Enjolras with his knowledge of French history. He’s a poet, a good one, and will write down snippets of verse on whatever’s handy, whether it be paper, desk, or forearm (they all get used to having Neruda on their wrists). He’s the one who names them Les Amis de l’ABC, giggling at his own wit before explaining the pun—ABC, he says, is pronounced similarly to _abaisse,_ ‘the abased’. Enjolras is pleased with the symbolism of the name, Combeferre with its esotericism, and the name sticks.

Their meetings continue to attract good crowds, but there are a few men who come early, stay late, and manage to weave themselves into the fabric of this group. There’s Feuilly, a part-time janitor who reads Rousseau between shifts at a convenience store; Joly, a mild-mannered biology major who pops Vitamin C tablets like they’re candy; Bossuet, Joly’s boyfriend, who everyone learns very quickly not to drink anything hot around; Bahorel, who’s loud and uncouth but occasionally injects gravity into discourse (and, honestly, is too scary to be asked to leave).

The last to join their band is Grantaire. Though the Musain’s primarily a coffee shop, he can be seen drinking vodka and Cokes at five PM, and has usually graduated to just vodka by the time Enjolras is done talking. If it lasts any longer than an hour, the Musain baristas keep a bottle of absinthe just for him. The eight of them have collectively seen him sober exactly once, and he stinks of paint and alcohol, but he’s terrifyingly clever even drunk off his ass and is the only person Combeferre’s ever seen who can reduce Enjolras to incoherency.

_There's a hunger in the land  
There's a reckoning still to be reckoned_

By the time they’re finished with their freshman year, they comprise a cohesive unit. They hang out on the quad together, help each other with homework, cover for each other when skipping class, split bar tabs, and bail each other out of jail (well, only once—Bahorel got into a tiff over a girl).

Slowly the Political Discourse becomes actual discussion; theory becomes conversations on how best to change the world. They go to their first LGBT rally in March of the next year, and start planning their own. That June Enjolras gets on the line to speak at an actual protest, and Combeferre knows that Enjolras will do amazingly—he always does—but he truly looks like a prophetic angel, golden hair flying and cheeks flushed from exertion but speaking truth.

The crowd cheers, and Combeferre, ever silent, is hoarse from screaming, voice lost in the crowd. Courfeyrac has slung an arm around his shoulders, Jehan is riding on Courf’s back, Feuilly is roaring in concert with Bahorel, and the entire group has finally meshed into a force that Combeferre believes can change the world.

 

 

_And there's gonna be hell to pay  
At the end of the day!_

* * *

 

_I smell women_   
_Smell 'em in the air_   
_Think I'll drop my anchor_   
_In that harbor over there_

Combeferre has his first sexual experience when he’s nineteen. It’s with a redheaded girl named Jenny, who Courfeyrac drags him towards bodily, deposits him, introduces them, and leaves. Combeferre isn’t really sure what to do at this point, but Jenny is eyeing him like she’s Bruce and he’s Dory and is bending over far enough that if her shirt was looser he could probably see her navel. Her voice is throaty, and he can’t deny that her hand on his arm feels good, so when she offers to take him back to her place it’s not like he’s going to say no.

Courfeyrac sends him a wink as he’s led out, and Combeferre is pretty sure the Irishman slipped him something because he’s never felt this pleasantly drunk before.  She starts on his neck as they take a cab, and her hands are sliding under his shirt as the cabbie parks in front of her apartment. He pays the cabbie and barely has time to readjust his glasses before she’s dragging him up the stairs and through the door.

He’d fallen asleep after, and it’s about three AM when he’s awakened by what sounds like a cat. Jenny’s curled into his side, hair spread like a halo across the pillow, but he slides out of bed to look for the window that must have been left open for feral cats to make that much noise.

Instead, he follows the sound to the other bedroom, and his stomach sinks. It isn’t a cat. He pushes the door open and his suspicions are confirmed: a tiny redheaded toddler is standing up, and the cries he’s been hearing are escalating into a wail.

_I might have known  
There is always some man_

Combeferre is an only child, but he sort of knows how this works from television. He fastens his hands around the tiny human’s middle and lifts, marveling at how large his hands appear against its torso, and braces it against his chest. The wails quiet somewhat, and so he jiggles it gently, humming a tuneless rhythm that quiets the child down completely. After only about ten minutes, the baby is breathing quietly and evenly, but one of its fat little fists is fastened around his index finger and he doesn’t have the heart to detach it, so he sits in the rickety rocking chair across from the crib.

When Jenny comes through the door around six, wearing his shirt, he’s in the same position, baby curled against his chest and his jaw set against its shoulder as they both doze. Jenny smiles slightly and backs out quietly, heading for the kitchen to make pancakes.

He wanders into the kitchen, still holding the baby, about twenty minutes later, and they talk. She tells him about the baby’s father, that there was supposed to have been a babysitter, and thanks him for taking care of Jake. Combeferre tells her it’s no trouble, and they sit down to breakfast with Jake in his high chair and it’s more intimate than anything they’d done the night before.

_Lovely lady, come along and join us!  
Lovely lady!_

 

 

As Jenny shows him out, he presses his number into her hand and tells her if she ever needs a babysitter, to call him. Her fingers close over it, thin fingers that had been so pleasurable at night and yet so gentle with her son, and she smiles. He tells her softly she’s much prettier without the heavy eyeliner, and turns down the steps with a calm heart.

* * *

 

_I dreamed a dream of time gone by  
when hope was high and life worth living_

Combeferre lies to Enjolras for the first time their sophomore year of college.

It’s about Grantaire.

It’s pretty apparent to all of them that their resident  cynic drinks too much, and probably overindulges in a dozen other substances as well, but it doesn’t really hit them—not even Combeferre, the de facto babysitter—until Combeferre catches him slumped over a toilet at the Musain, cheap razor poised at the fold of his elbow.

_I dreamed that love would never die  
I dreamed that God would be forgiving_

Combeferre’s never moved that fast in his life. He lunges for Grantaire, slaps the razor from his hand, and pulls him upright to lean against his chest, sinking to his knees behind the smaller man. He’s speaking quickly in Grantaire’s ear, and is preparing to shout over his shoulder for help when he feels the cynic’s short fingernails scrabbling at his forearm, and he can hear his raspy voice begging him not to call anyone.

So he doesn’t, and only sits and holds Grantaire as his frantic shaking stills and words begin to come out. The dark-haired boy speaks haltingly of an uncaring, drug-addicted mother and a succession of abusive father figures; tells horrific stories of bullying over clothes, hair, or perceived stupidity that was diagnosed far too late as dyslexia; of being punched out by the first man he’d ever propositioned, and thereafter being so afraid of misreading gaydar he’d stayed in the closet for four years. With every sentence, every story, his breathing gets heavier and he’s shaking again, not with withdrawal or depression but heavy, wracking sobs that coincide with Combeferre’s shirtsleeves beginning to soak with salt water.

_I had a dream my life would be  
So different from this hell I’m living_

Neither of them have any idea how long they remained on that bathroom floor, and it’s only by some miracle that no one walks in on them—or, Combeferre thinks bitterly for the very first time, the spell of Enjolras’s voice. The voice that clearly has entranced Grantaire, he of the addictive personality, and that has teased the drunk to the end of his wits, only to be backhanded by the withering looks of a frustrated revolutionary that has absolutely no idea what he’s doing to the least of his followers.

It’s then that Combeferre, for the very first time, is angry with his chief. Not for Grantaire, not really, though there’s some sympathy tied up in it—but for his inability to _see._ Enjolras wants to change the world, wants to transform the way of life for thousands of people. The trade-off being, of course, the individuals who will lose their way of life, who follow without understanding. Combeferre vows to tone Enjolras down from then on, to keep in mind the people who they will affect if they get their way. He also vows to look after Grantaire.

 

He starts right then, gently manhandling the smaller man out the back door of the café, into his car, and to his dorm room. He tucks R into his own bed, and if Courfeyrac gives the pair of them an odd look when he comes in and Enjolras questions his absence fiercely, he ignores the both of them and does his work, propped up against his bed, always within reach of the sleeping Grantaire.  
  
 _So different now than what it seemed_  
 _now life has killed the dream_  
 _I dreamed_

* * *

 

_I’ve seen your face before  
Show me some way to help you_

Combeferre is, by any stretch of the imagination, a giving person. He’s provided bail money, shoulders to cry on, alcohol, Band-Aids physical and metaphorical, and other emollients each in their turn to each of his friends. He gives more of himself than he probably should, only to keep their herd of stoned cats in line.

But one thing all of his friends know, to their detriment, is to _never_ bother Combeferre when he’s asleep. If he knows Bahorel and Feuilly are going to be out late, he’ll set his alarm for every hour and check his phone for messages, but after two AM everyone knows not to ask him for rides. If he’s asleep at 9AM (which is never), it’s safer to assume he’s checked that his early class is cancelled, thank you very much, than to wake him up. Courfeyrac has received shiners from shoes to the face, Enjolras has gotten viciously sworn at, and Feuilly has gotten unceremoniously hung up on. Combeferre is _serious_ about his sleep, and anyone who chooses to come between him and it when he chooses to indulge is forfeit.

That said, when his phone goes off at two AM, the fact that he answers it is a portent of God.

It’s Jenny, and she’s hysterical, whimpering about how Jake won’t stop crying and she can’t leave him long enough to call 911 and he’s burning up and _oh God_

Combeferre bolts out of bed, and shifts into awake, alert, caretaker mode in less than three seconds. He’s quietly but urgently asking her where she is, while slipping his feet into a pair of Courfeyrac’s flip-flops and grabbing his keys and wallet from where they lie on the desk. She gives him an address, and he promises to be there as soon as he can, not bothering to leave a note for his roommates as he rushes out the door.

When he finally gets to the location she’s told him, he’s half-afraid it’s a joke and half-afraid for Jenny’s life. It’s not her apartment building, but rather a run-down warehouse, and when she comes out of the building holding her son—not a baby now, rather a toddler—her hair is dirty and uncombed, and her clothes have seen better days.

He bundles her into his car and rushes to the closest hospital, and as they sit in the emergency room he writes out the paperwork because Jenny’s shaking too badly to hold a pen. She’s clutching Jake to her, though, who has since stopped crying and is lying ominously still.

He’s taken away by nurses, though, and a kind-faced woman in scrubs is comforting Jenny and shooting him dirty looks for not having done so before. A doctor comes out and asks if he’s the father, and he shakes his head no, instead motioning at the quaking woman beside him who is taken through the swinging doors. She won’t go, though, asking plaintively if he be allowed to accompany her, and after some wrangling he is.

They’re met by another doctor, who informs them that Jake has pneumonia. A social worker comes in after that, and Jenny is crying again and wailing that she’s a _good mother_ and begging that her son not be taken away. Combeferre can do nothing but watch and hold Jake’s hand in his little bed, the child’s flame-colored hair so similar to his mother’s that Combeferre’s seen splayed across pillows, his mother who is now leaning against the bed, crying silently.  
  
 _How have you come to grief_  
 _In such a place as this?_

Jenny is allowed to stay until visiting hours are over, holding her son’s hand as Combeferre talks with the social worker about what can be done. It’s a lot of legal jargon, but it boils down to being able to prove residency and employment. Combeferre knows Jenny has an apartment, had assumed she had a job, but given where he’d found her he is sure no longer. He gently urges the near-catatonic woman out the hospital doors when they’re finally asked to leave. He takes her to eat something and explains, from the social worker’s notes, what she needs to do to get Jake back. The name of her son is the only thing that sparks life in her dead eyes, and she listen as attentively as she can given what’s happened to her in the past twelve hours.

Combeferre takes her back to her apartment after that, because there isn’t a whole lot more he can do and Jenny has been mumbling about sleep. She does not invite him up, and he does not ask what she’d been doing at the warehouse. Her eyes are guarded, now, cold, and as she takes the social worker’s notes from his hand in an odd mimicry of what she’d done a few months earlier, he has an odd premonition that he will not see her again. That feeling sits like a block of ice in his stomach, and he almost insists on walking her up, but he can’t make the words come out. Instead, he urges her—again—to call him. She nods dully, turns, and trudges up her front steps, fumbling the lock and dirty hair blowing in the January wind.

Combeferre goes back to his dorm room and sleeps for twelve hours, and his face is so uncharacteristically stormy when he wakes up at ten that night that not even Enjolras dares to ask him about what has transpired.

 

_Where will she end  
This child without a friend?_

* * *

 

_Don’t you see_  
 _the evening star appearing?_  
 _How fast the minutes fly away_  
 _And every minute’s colder_  
  
Combeferre sees the obituary in the newspaper about a month later. Twenty-something hangs herself in apartment, police are investigating, suicide note reading only “I love you, Jake”. Leaves behind a son and estranged parents in a suburb of Boston.

He searches the parents’ names for nearly a week before he finds them. He calls the social worker he’d talked to before and urges her to call them before Jake goes into the foster system, and she calls him back a week later to tell him that Jacob Stephen McDaniels will be adopted by his grandparents.

A $100 check shows up on the first of each month in the McDaniels mailbox, signed illegibly and made out only to Jacob McDaniels. It’s drawn from one of Combeferre’s father’s many accounts, and it is delivered without fail every month for eighteen years.

It’s the least he can do for the redheaded child he rocked to sleep.

 

_Your child will want for nothing_   
_‘Dear monsieur, do you come from God in heaven?_   
_Tell Cosette I love her and I’ll see her when I wake’_

* * *

 

_If I speak, I am condemned  
If I stay silent, I am damned_

Combeferre is not a talker. All of his friends know this, and do not take his silence as offensive or annoying but rather fill it with talking (if they’re Courf or Grantaire or Enjolras) or are content with quiet (if they’re Feuilly or Jehan or Joly). Combeferre is capable of going days without speaking, quite literally. After the first two instances, Grantaire started timing it, and the current record is three days, eighteen hours, and forty-seven minutes. It was broken by Combeferre asking Bossuet to pass the salt.

So it isn’t a game to him, not really; Combeferre simply sees very little reason in talking if he has nothing to say. His two best friends are some of the most eloquent people he knows, and he can communicate with simply a glance over his glasses or a hand on Enjolras’s arm, so why break what little silence the Amis have for the sake of speaking?

This isn’t to say he’s rude, because he isn’t. Day-long stints of silence are rare, and usually signal that an exam is coming up or scholarship applications are due. But as a general rule, Combeferre does not speak unless spoken to, and then only if he has something to say.

This makes when he does speak—and those rare moments where he can’t seem to stem the words and they tumble out one after another—precious and beautiful, and even Enjolras will fall silent if Combeferre indicates that he has something to say. And sometimes, he does.

The first time they ever hear Combeferre speak—speak like Enjolras does—it’s a muggy evening in May and Grantaire has been spouting snark all evening. Usually the Amis think it’s funny, and it’s good for Enjolras to be taken down a peg sometimes, but when he makes a domestic violence joke everyone in the café knows he’s gone too far. What they don’t expect, though, is Combeferre quietly closing his laptop, setting it aside, and standing to his full height, polishing his glasses. He begins to speak, not loudly but projected enough that it fills the room without difficulty.

_How can I ever face my fellow men?  
How can I ever face myself again?_

He speaks of women who fear their husbands, not limited to the destitute but of all classes. He speaks of children who fear their fathers, fear the shouts and screams that emanate from the next room but still starve for a ruffle of hair or tight hug from the man who gave them life. He talks about babies who have no fathers, husbands without wives, and questions whether it’s better to have stability than safety, and somehow they all understand that he’s seen the horror of both.

One by one, as he touches on the different kinds of loss a child can experience, he sparks recognition in eyes. Grantaire shudders slightly when he speaks of shouts, and is pulled against Courfeyrac tightly, who lets his own head fall forward at the mention of fathers who are distant and sometimes uncaring; Feuilly rubs his temples when Combeferre mentions the fatherless, those who are forced to grow up before their time. Bahorel shifts uncomfortably when he hears the story of women who take advantage of their children, and Jehan reaches over the much larger man’s shoulders to wrap him as tightly as his slender arms can. Joly curls into Bossuet when he hears of fathers who perhaps love their children but are never there to show it, and Enjolras sits down heavily when Combeferre talks about drunken mothers and violent fathers.

_He gave me hope when hope was gone_

It’s then that Combeferre halts for a moment, eyes moving over each of his friends—taking care of them even as he speaks—and ends rather abruptly, speaking of the children that need saving and the system that needs changing to help them. He moves towards Enjolras then, enveloping the smaller, leaner man in an embrace that speaks of understanding, speaks of comfort, and speaks of hope. And by the way Enjolras’s fingers wrap around his wrists, it’s not an unfamiliar position.

_He gave me strength to journey on_

 

Bahorel breaks the silence by slamming a shot and calling loudly for another, and the spell breaks.  
 _  
Who am I? Who am I?_

* * *

 

_Men like you can never change  
a man such as you_

When Combeferre gets a call from his father, asking to meet, he’s honestly too surprised to do anything but acquiesce.

He suggests they meet at the Musain—a perverse bit of rebellion, he supposes—but is shot down in favor of a steakhouse in downtown Amherst. He doesn’t dress up, purposely doesn’t let Jehan trim his too-long hair, even borrows one of Grantaire’s knit caps to complete the hippie-college-student ensemble. He knows it’s what his father’s expecting, and also that it will infuriate him nonetheless. Combeferre has been the perfect son for twenty years, and he’s tired of keeping his head down.

True to form, his father’s face hardens into a mask when he sees his son, but they manage to greet each other civilly, Zachary Jr.’s face relaxing into the half smile that he knows confuses everyone, and exchange small talk until their entrees arrive.

When they’re firmly ensconced in their respective lunches (not dinners, Combeferre has a class at four and a meeting at seven, and he will _not_ disrupt his life in the smallest degree for this man), his father informs him, calmly, that his parents are divorcing.

Combeferre’s brain roils with bitter commentary—evidence of Grantaire’s influence on him—but he says nothing; silence has been ingrained in him far too deeply by the man across the table from him for that. He only nods, still with the half smile, and sets down his knife.

His father is still talking, mentioning settlements and prenups and trusts, but Combeferre isn’t listening. He’s focused only one thing.

“Why here? Why now?”

His father stops. “What?”

Combeferre’s eyes, frozen gray, meet his father’s—the same color as the whiskey he drinks. “I want to know why.”

“Son, sometimes—“

“Don’t call me that.”

“ _What?”_ the anger is gathering in the older man’s eyes now, but they’re in a public place and Combeferre is six foot five and he is no longer afraid of the man in front of him.

“I’m not your son,” he says quietly. “You’ve known that since before I was born. Now I want to know why, after two decades of lying, that you felt the need to cut my mother loose.”

There is no color left in his father’s face. “How long—?”

“Since I was fourteen. It didn’t matter, though,” he can’t help adding, “because you hadn’t been a father for a decade before that. You were too busy with your drinks and your work. And beating your wife.”

“How _dare_ —“

“I speak only what I know to be true.”

“I’m divorcing your mother because I’m entering rehab.”

Combeferre is silent at this, and not his usual silence, laden with unspoken words and thoughts, but actual, stunned silence. “You…you are?”

“Zach, I treated your mother like shit for twenty years.” The man scrubs his hand over his face. “I was angry because I loved her, and she chose someone else—my own brother. Then, when by some accident of fate I got her instead, she…she still didn’t love me. That hadn’t changed. My whole life, and nothing has changed, Zachary.” His father’s eyes rake over his face feverishly, begging him to understand. “I am what my father was, and what his father was—a man who is a slave to money and drunk on the power it gives him. I want to be better than that. It took me twenty years, my son, but I want to be a better man than I was before.”

He literally cannot believe what he’s hearing, but somehow forces out the words. “How can I believe you, Dad?” His voice is broken, whispering. “How can I?”

The man across the table from him leans forward and grasps his wrist that’s been lying limp next to his plate. “You don’t have to. I don’t deserve it.” He huffs out a breath, breath that smells of alcohol, yes, but is not overpowering. “Let me try to prove it to you.”

_Every man is born in sin  
Every man must choose his way_

The seven-year-old that first saw his father push his mother, that was lifted by a nanny and taken away for bedtime, rises ascendant in his chest. He wants more than anything to go back to that night, so that they can live this life again, with a father who would _be_ a father.

But he’s not going to get that. This is what he’ll get, and Combeferre the guide can take this man’s hand or let it lie.

(That’s not true. He couldn’t let a cause go if he wanted to; so in a way, everything that happens as a result of this is Enjolras’s fault).

So he turns his hand over and grasps the long fingers, fingers that are not so different from his own, the hand that is dusted with hair that is the same color, attached to arms that flow into shoulders of similar proportion and lead into a neck that’s marred by the same cowlick that Combeferre can never get to lie flat. They are not so different after all.

“I’m proud of you, Zachary. I’m proud of you, that you aren’t going to be like me. You’re not going to be bitter; you’re not going to live with the darkness that is our life. My brother was like you,” his father laughs. “He wanted to change the world, and he was snuffed out before he could. He made mistakes,” his father says as he stops to cough, “but he loved your mother, and he would have been so proud of you. Just like I am.”

It’s too much. He cannot feel this much, cannot experience this rush of so many conflicting emotions at once. Twenty years of pent-up anger, love, hope, frustration, cannot be allowed to surface all at once, but they do anyway, and Combeferre the silent squeezes his father’s hand because he cannot make a sound.

“I love you, Dad.” He’s not sure he’s ever said it before. Not that he can remember, anyway. But with all that’s happened, with the friends he has made and the people he has lost, he can afford to be magnanimous. He’s not sure what the future will bring for himself and this man, but he is willing to give it a try.

They talk for nearly two hours after that, never really letting each other’s hands go, talking about, mainly, Combeferre’s life and school and friends and classes. His father listens attentively, and Combeferre talks more than he ever has in one sitting, waxing eloquent about the things he likes and doesn’t like and the people he’s met and, haltingly, Jenny. His father doesn’t say much to that one, only presses his hand down, and they move on to happier subjects.

Combeferre leaves at three because he has to for class, and as he walks away from the table a new bond has been formed—not one of father and son, because it’s too late for that. Not even of equals, because it will take more than words to heal what this man has done to him and the people he cares for. Perhaps this man will never change, and this will be but a blip on a long line of abuse and taunts and distance. But for now, it’s a start, and as Combeferre leaves the restaurant he taps out a reminder on his phone to call his mother.

 

 

_And this I swear to you tonight_   
_your child will live within my care_   
_and I will raise her to the light_

* * *

 

_There is a castle on a cloud,  
I like to go there in my sleep_

For Combeferre, very little can compare to the rush of learning. It’s why he takes more classes than are probably sane, most of them practically useless. It’s why he reads voraciously and attends lectures on the most esoteric of subjects, because for him the _knowing_ is the thing. Grantaire thinks he’s crazy, and tells him so; even Enjolras sometimes looks at him worriedly and asks if maybe he’s doing too much this semester? Combeferre only reassures him and hurries to his next class, because his professor’s talking about the _philosophes_ in post-revolutionary France and he hasn’t done a lot of research on those yet.

 

That’s how he meets Eponine, actually—he’s on a wild-goose-chase for Descartes that’s taken him through two department libraries and into the Math library when she finally directs him towards the correct aisle. He pays her back by helping her with her calculus homework, and he finds excuses to keep coming back. She catches on eventually, and he asks her out, but finding time for them to actually _go_ out proves a challenge. He ends up asking her to come to an Amis meeting instead, and the rest is history.

Eponine is one of the few things in his life that demands nothing, requires nothing. Most people do not even have to ask; Combeferre simply gives them what they need before they even realize they need it. He edits Enjolras’s speeches, helps Grantaire detox, listens to Feuilly, Courfeyrac and Joly bitch and moan, and cleans up after Bossuet and Bahorel. He’s the cosmic janitor of the Amis de l’ABC, and being able to come home to the _one_ person who’s never asked for his help is, frankly, relief at its best.  
  
 _Aren’t any floors for me to sweep  
not in my castle on a cloud_

It’s gotten to the point where he leans on her, probably too much, for support that his friends do not know to give. Eponine is the only one who gets to see how tired he is, who rubs his temples and sits quietly in his lap while he strokes her hair, and they talk. She’s the only one who can get him to really _talk,_ to light from the inside about things that aren’t revolution, aren’t change.

Instead, he talks to her about the classes he’s had, how genetically engineered E. coli can fluoresce under black light and textile workers used beetle blood to make red dye. She may not enjoy it herself, may not understand it, but she loves watching him wax eloquent so much that it doesn’t matter. When they are together, there’s a little insulation from the outside world, from its demands and unheard cries and its constant whirlwind of injustice.

When they are together, they are wrapped up in each other, and they demand nothing of each other. Perhaps it’s the lack of asking that makes the giving so much easier. Helping her with her problems, when she needs, is not a burden—not that he’d begrudge her if it was, it’s not like he begrudges the burdens his friends place on him every day—it’s a pleasure, because it makes her happy. He takes care of people because it’s what he does. It’s what he’s always done. He takes care of _her_ because he wants to. It’s a subtle difference, perhaps; but a significant one, at least for him. Being with her is not a burden, ever.

It’s times like these that Eponine has trouble understanding why anyone thinks Combeferre is quiet. She knows he is, of course; she’s seen him in public—but even in public every twitch, every movement of an eyebrow or mouth, the barest degree change of his half-smile, gives a completely different character to what he’s thinking. She’s proud of that; proud that she can read his face so easily.

_There is a lady all in white,  
Holds me and sings a lullaby_

But beyond that, when they are not in public Combeferre won’t _shut up._ He asks her about her day, laughs loudly from his stomach at her frustrated commentary, gestures wildly with his hands until he nearly knocks something over, and is altogether a different person than what he allows the world to see. He’s more actively affectionate, pushing her against the counter and wrapping his big hands around her waist, rather than letting her come to him like he normally would.

When she is there with Combeferre and anyone other than Enjolras or Courfeyrac, they watch their interactions confusedly—who is this man, they think, who laughs loudly and kisses soundly and argues good-naturedly? Who is this boyish giant who nearly knocks things over, who takes off his glasses and grumbles easily at his girlfriend when he can’t find them again?  
  
 _I know a place where no one's lost,_  
I know a place where no one cries  
  
When Enjolras and Courf are there, though, they meet her eyes when Combeferre is off looking for his spectacles, and they share a smile. They know this Combeferre, because it is a Combeferre who is at complete ease. This is a Combeferre who is not hiding, is not refining his personality to mesh with others, and it’s the purest distillation of the _self_ that makes up Zachary Aloysius Combeferre, Jr. She loves it, and knows how privileged she is to see it.

But his eyes spark when she enters the room, and his eyelids fall shut in bliss when she runs her fingers through his hair, no matter who is there—whether it’s just them or a lecture hall of students. It’s how she knows Combeferre, the man, does not change when his environment does; only the way he reacts to it. That is comforting to a girl who’s endured so much loss and uncertainty in her life, and it’s one of the main things that makes Combeferre attractive to her. He is dependable, not boring, but absolutely steadfast. He does not compromise the things that matter. And what matters, to hear him say it, is that he loves her.

There’s really not much to say to that, is there?  
  
 _Crying at all is not allowed,_  
 _Not in my castle on a cloud._

* * *

 

_My band of soaks, my den of dissolutes  
my dirty jokes, my always-pissed-as-newts_

 

The proprietor of the Café Musain is an elderly woman, as tall as Courfeyrac, who despite being the better part of eighty needs no cane to get around and works the till four days a week. She looks like an ex-hippie, with hair longer than Eponine’s and flowing peasant skirts, but is perfectly capable of frog-marching drunken students to the door by herself, and has a fouler mouth, when she chooses, than Bahorel when he’s in his cups.

She’s tossed nearly every Ami out on their ass at least once, but never Combeferre, because first, he’s never drunk; and second, she has a soft spot for him. He helps keep his rambunctious friends in line, and she keeps him in the occasional free coffee and flirts with him over the counter, making him blush at first and, eventually, flirt back with a carefree attitude that looks good on him.

He, as well as everyone else, calls her Madame Hucheloup. She has never provided a first name, and still wears her late husband’s wedding ring around her neck. When business is slow and Combeferre’s writing essays in what’s become known as “his” corner, she’ll lean over the counter and they’ll talk for hours, she teaching him French and he telling her the gossip from campus.

People talk around Combeferre, some to fill silence and others simply because they don’t notice that he’s there. It serves him well, and keeps Madame happy, so they develop a relationship predicated on coffee and college scuttlebutt. It’s a good relationship.  
  
 _Seldom do you see_  
 _honest men like me_  
 _a gent of good intent_  
 _who’s content to be_

Sometimes she’ll even scare customers off his preferred couch by the edge of the counter if she knows he’ll be there, something she does for no one else—not even Enjolras, who buys more coffee, or Jehan, who speaks better French.. He’s not sure if that’s a good thing, but he appreciates the thought.

The rest of the Musain’s clientele is…colorful, so to speak—it has its share of hipster college students with their ironic tattoos and complicated coffee orders, but it’s also an LGBT hot spot and, weirdly, a stop for whatever bikers pass through this part of the state (they, too, have complicated coffee orders—one of the strangest sights Combeferre has witnessed involves a six-four, 250-pound biker type, complete with leather, bandanna, and horseshoe mustache, drinking a large iced caramel macchiato with double whipped cream). So the café stays busy, and most of the regulars have learned to not blink at the dropped curse or overly loud laugh (though the regulars also know that cursing in front of Madame will earn them a glare and a slightly-burnt refill).

But when the door swings open to a stream of curses, indicating colorfully and explicitly how the object of the discourse could contort themselves to the speaker’s pleasure, the entire café looks up in surprise.

_Master of the house,  
doling out the charm_

“Where the _fuck_ is she?” the man growls as he approaches the bar, pausing only for breath and clarity. Not much, though, as all except one of the baristas is female.  
  
Madame Hucheloup’s glare has progressed from cold to positively glacial. Though she’s facing away from him, Combeferre can feel it from his accustomed place on his couch.

“Who, monsieur?” Oh no. She only breaks out the French when she’s seriously pissed, and Combeferre closes his laptop in preparation to leave. While watching Madame teach rowdies a lesson is humorous, he doesn’t want to be caught as a witness if police are called. He has a class in an hour.

“I know she works here, bitch owes me rent.”

_What?_ He continues packing, but trains an ear to listen intently. It isn’t hard; the man, with greasy hair that snarls around his face and bony shoulders, is yelling loud enough for God himself not to have trouble hearing.

“I’m sorry, monsieur,” Madame replies. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please leave.”  
  
 _Ready with a handshake and an open palm_  
  
The man’s fists clench, and Combeferre reaches for his phone. This man’s rather more vitriolic and rather less drunk than the garden-variety disturbance, and Combeferre’s thinking about calling the police himself.

“ _Eponine Thénardier_ , you old hag.”

The man’s gotten quieter now, but the quality of his voice is such that he’s easy to hear.

“My daughter. Where is she?”

Combeferre freezes. _This_ is Eponine’s father? This snarling, rat-faced man is responsible for the existence of his girlfriend? Studying him, it’s physically possible; their hair is the same color and they’re of vaguely similar builds, but the utter repugnance of the man in the café is foreign to any interaction Combeferre’s had with Eponine. If this is what she’d had to deal with for eighteen years, it’s no wonder she never mentions family.

_Master of the house? Isn't worth me spit!_

The man is still blathering about rent money, but Combeferre’s still focused on his earlier comment. _Bitch owes me rent._ It’s a lie—Combeferre knows Eponine’s landlord personally—but it’s a rather more visceral response that’s keeping his attention.

Before he’s really aware of what he’s doing, he’s moved to the counter, only about four feet from the still-talking man. He sees the glow of a cell phone in one of the other patron’s hands, so the police have been called. However, his focus is uncharacteristically clouded to the face of the rat, now uncomfortably close to Madame Hucheloup—though still across the counter—and still spraying vitriol and spit.

_Servant to the poor, butler to the great  
Hypocrite and toady and inebriate!_

“I’m sorry, _what_ did you call her?”

The man turns slightly, and in credit to his own self-preservation he rocks back a bit when faced with all of Combeferre’s six feet and five inches. It’s not enough, though, because the rabid light in his eye simply glows brighter, and he leans forward again. “I said, where’s that _bitch_ Eponine Thénardier, you old _hag._ And what’s it to _you,_ glasses-boy?”

_Everybody raise a glass_

He’s struck by the juvenility of the insult, which clears his head enough to grab the man’s collar rather than his throat. He hears himself saying, astonishingly mildly, “You need to leave,” and without much effort he lifts the older man—he’s almost as light as Eponine, though rather wigglier—and pulls him through the store. He kicks the door open with a _jangle_ and tosses the man, with a rush of satisfaction, into the street—right in front of waiting police cars.  
  
 _Shove it up the master’s arse!_  
  
He doesn’t make it to class that day, but Madame gives him free coffee for three months. Neither of them tell Eponine about it, and a few directed questions from a placid exterior a few hours later leave her with no knowledge of the fact that her boyfriend just got her father arrested.

He sees Thénardier exactly once after that, panning one of the street corners as a beggar. He sees Combeferre coming—for once, the guide is glad for his distinctive silhouette—and runs, leaving Combeferre with a grudging laugh that he distracts Eponine from with a kiss.

_Everybody raise a glass to the master of the house!_

* * *

 

_From now on I will always be here  
Where I go, you will be._

“All right, now I know something’s off. What’s up?”

“Hmm?”

“Combeferre, you don’t do PDA. Now tell me.”  
  
“I just enjoy your company, that’s all.”  
  
“You keep saying that, and you’ll never get rid of me.” Her grin is flirtatious, but there’s a warmth in it that he loves—a warmth that he’s worked long and hard to have bestowed on him.

“That’s my plan.”

He squeezes her hand and tugs her through the crosswalk, casting the barest glance to the recently-vacated street corner.

She’ll never see that man again if he can help it. The idea of ‘not parenting her’ has taken on a rather less savory flavor, and for the first time he wants to take Eponine and put her on a pedestal, so that no one can do anything but worship her as she deserves. As it is, he’ll have to settle for kisses.

That’s okay too.  
  
 _Yes, my dear, yes, it's true.  
There's a castle just waiting for you._

* * *

 

_There, out in the darkness_   
_A fugitive running_   
_Fallen from God_

It’s their second rally of the new school year, gathered in front of the Boston Courthouse, and it’s the first one that Eponine’s accompanied them to. She’s sticking close to Combeferre’s side, wrapping an arm around his waist to avoid getting lost in the crowd, and they’re watching Enjolras speak. As usual, he’s set the crowd on fire, yelling and screaming--but it’s happy, hopeful, not angry.

“Today, brothers and sisters, we gather together to celebrate _love—_ love, and the freedom to express it as we choose! Today, today is about _freedom,_ and solidarity with those who have not yet received the rights we have! Support Minnesota! Support Florida, support California’s Supreme Court! _Down_ with DOMA!”

_Fallen from grace  
God be my witness_

The crowd is screaming, louder now, and the general happiness that pervades the day is only magnified by Grantaire joining Enjolras onstage. _That_ one had taken some work on the behalf of the entire group, with Courfeyrac eventually threatening to lock them in a closet until they either killed each other or had sex (and Combeferre nearly letting him), but their resident cynic had gotten up the courage to confront Enjolras after nearly a year of pining. Eponine’s responsible, Combeferre is pretty sure; but _technically_ all he knows is that they’d spent three hours in Eponine’s dorm room, where Cosette, her roommate, had been kicked out, and Grantaire had come out looking dumbstruck and a little frightened.

That weekend, neither Enjolras nor R had answered their phones for two solid days, and when they’d emerged from _Enjolras’s_ dorm room (Courfeyrac had bunked with Jehan and Combeferre with Eponine, neither complaining), they were the disgustingly adorable couple literally everyone else had anticipated.

_I never shall yield  
Till we come face to face_

Now, Grantaire has wrapped his arms around Enjolras’s shoulders, pressed a sweet kiss to his cheek, and tugged him gently but insistently off the stage for kissing not involving a cheek. They’re followed by good-natured catcalls and residual cheers, and Enjolras is replaced by a young-looking girl with hipster glasses and a rainbow scarf wrapped around her waist. Eponine reaches up and presses on Combeferre’s shoulders, and without warning jumps, wrapping her knees around Combeferre’s waist. He’s able to get his hands under her thighs just in time, and she can finally see over his shoulder. They both join in the laughing, and Eponine lets out a yell straight in Combeferre’s ear. She’s rewarded with a pinch to her thigh, and her shriek is lost in the rising swell of the crowd.

_Till we come face to face_

The noise is cut, however, by a different kind of shriek—one jagged and harsh with hate, coming from a mousy woman by the edge of the impromptu stage.

 _“Heathens!_ Sodomizers! Blasphemers! May God grant you mercy for the havoc you wreak on earth!”

_Stars  
In your multitudes_

The crowd has fallen near-silent, but begins to rumble again—not with happiness, this time, but with anger. The mousy woman has backup, though, and Combeferre sets Eponine on her feet in preparation for things to get ugly. Next to him, Bahorel chuckles slightly evilly, cracking his knuckles.

Eponine, for her part, feels a small hand wrap around her wrist and yank her towards the front. She’s not able to speak or yell before she’s being pulled through the crowd, and it’s only after a few seconds she realizes that it’s Cosette.

Now, she and Cosette are roommates, and she supposes they get along fairly well, but Eponine’s never really gotten over how badly Marius burned her their senior year of high school. The fact that Cosette is the sweetest person on the planet adds insult to injury. Eponine is very happy with Combeferre, and she doesn’t begrudge the couple their happiness, but she’s never felt the need for them to be _friends,_ either.

_Scarce to be counted  
Filling the darkness_

But now this little blonde girl is pulling her onto the _stage_ and she’s digging her heels in but it doesn’t stop Cosette, whose hand is a vice around hers and is rather terrifyingly strong for such a small person. And now she’s _talking,_ addressing in a type of voice that is not loud but somehow cuts through the noise, the heckler.

“You call us heathens? You ask for God’s mercy? Well, let me tell you, ma’am, that it is _you_ who defy God today. God is _love,_ and that is his first Commandment: to love each other as He has loved us! We come together here to love each other, and you spread only hate!” Her voice, previously pleading and placating, hardens. “So why don’t you take your hate elsewhere, because it has no place here! God is here, because two are three are gathered who love each other!”

_And so it must be_   
_For so it is written_   
_On the doorway to Paradise_

And suddenly the vicelike grip has pulled Eponine into Cosette’s arms, and the smaller girl’s hands are on her shoulders and her lips are on hers.

They’re warm, and smoother than Combeferre’s, and there’s no scrape of stubble on her jaw, and Eponine’s only vaguely aware of the roar of the crowd and the heckler’s retreat because blood’s roaring in her ears, and her hands have wrapped around Cosette’s elbows.

Cosette’s released her now, and they’re breathing hard, still nose to nose, and Eponine feels absolutely no need to pull away. Cosette does first, and flits back down the steps into the arms of a dumbstruck Marius. Eponine follows numbly and steps into Combeferre’s embrace, who’s looking at Cosette with the odd little half smile he gets when he’s not sure about something or is trying to hide how he feels. Bahorel is laughing, and another speaker is getting up on stage. She looks up at Combeferre, whose expression widens into a real smile when he sees her face. “What was that?”

“I have no idea,” she responds dryly, only loud enough for him to hear. “It seemed to work, though.”

He coughs. “Indeed.”

She scrutinizes his face curiously, and is shocked to detect a touch of pink in his ears. “You liked that, didn’t you?”

Combeferre is silent, but his ears turn a fiery red.

“You _did!”_ Her voice is playfully accusing, but she wraps her arms around his neck, belying her tone. Standing on her tiptoes and pulling him down, she whispers, “It wasn’t half as good as kissing you, though.”

There’s not much he can reply to that except to remind her how good it actually is to kiss him, and Eponine is only dimly aware of her surroundings again—this time for rather more pleasurable reasons.

_I will never rest_

After that, Cosette and Eponine sit together at Amis meetings quite often, and occasionally compare notes on their respective boyfriends or help each other with homework. Kissing in front of several hundred people tends to break the ice, apparently. And sometimes, when they’re each seated in their respective man’s lap, the two boyfriends shoot each other a Look over their heads. When they do, though, their ears turn a matching shade of pink and they bend their heads, especially attentively, to their work.

_Till then, this I swear  
This I swear by the stars_

* * *

 

 

 

_How d’you do, my name’s Gavroche  
these are my people, here’s my patch_

When Combeferre meets Eponine’s brother for the first time, he has trouble believing that the two are related. Gavroche is dishwater blond and porcelain-pale, the kind of pale that lets you see veins moving under skin. In coloring, he’s nearly opposite with his Aryan looks to swarthy Eponine, whose tan skin and sloe eyes speak to Eastern European or Greek in her bloodline. Gavroche, by contrast, looks nearly Scandinavian.  
  
When he looks closer, though, the relation is apparent. Brown and blue eyes have the same spark, jaws set the same way, and Gavroche’s impish grin is one Combeferre recognizes from when Eponine’s trying to needle him.  
  
They’re sipping coffee at the Musain—Eponine has ordered Gavroche an espresso; but he seems to become no more hyperactive than he had been already, so Combeferre accepts the oddness and moves on. As he and Eponine carry on small talk, careful not to seem overly affectionate, Gavroche says little. He only watches, making Combeferre’s skin crawl with the weight of a gaze far too old for a child of Gavroche’s size.

Eponine’s phone rings, breaking a silence that’s begun to edge into awkward, and she shoots him an apologetic glance as she moves away to answer it.

Gavroche still hasn’t said anything, so Combeferre sips his coffee. He hasn’t felt this nervous in a long time, and he doesn’t understand why this preteen makes him want to suddenly apologize.

“You’re my sister’s new guy?” It’s the first time Gavroche has spoken to him directly. His voice, louder than it’s ever been, has a distinct roughness to it that Combeferre recognizes from Eponine’s when she’s mad. It’s street slang, he thinks, and what he finds exotic in his girlfriend he finds mildly creepy in her brother. It isn’t lost on him that this eleven-year-old, whose voice hasn’t cracked yet, has probably seen more of suffering than even Combeferre, with his drunken father, has. He suddenly feels very small.

_Think you're poor?_   
_Think you're free?_   
_Follow me! Follow me!_

“Yes.” His voice conveys lightness, a humor, even, that he does not feel. “You my girlfriend’s brother?” He intentionally mimics the slight rise at the end of the question, not to mock, but to make the boy feel at ease. He’s not sure if it works.

The urchin smiles, at least, and it’s frankly terrifying. Missing teeth of a little boy combine with the razor grin of a shark—he recognizes that, too, when Eponine’s trying to get something done—to make the smile slightly maniacal, which isn’t helped by the smudge of dirt under a cheekbone and slightly wild hair. “Yeah, I am.”  
  
They look at each other for a long minute, and, mirroring each other, sip their drinks.  
  
“You’re different.”

Combeferre raises his eyebrows. “Oh?” There’s not much else he can say, because he’s not sure where Gavroche is going.

“You’re different,” Gavroche says again. “You like books, not guns. Ep never has bruises when she comes home from you.”  
  
“Did she before?” Combeferre asks softly, and feels an unfamiliar cold settle in his stomach. It’s rage.

Gavroche is looking at him like he’s grown another head. “Yeah.” He says it like it’s a bygone, a stupid question, and that makes Combeferre even angrier. He buries himself in his coffee so he doesn’t show it, taking a slow sip and waiting for the flash of blinding anger behind his eyes to subside.

“Gavroche,” he says, even softer than he had before—so soft that the boy leans in in spite of himself to hear him—“if I can promise you nothing else, I can promise you this.” He sets his drink down and leans forward, hands clenched on his knees and holding the urchin’s ice-blue gaze with as much urgency as he can manage. “I will _never_ hurt your sister. I’d rather…” he stops. “Eponine will never be hurt because of me.”

Gavroche is eyeing him speculatively, but some of the stiffness, stiffness Combeferre had not noticed before, is leaching from his small body. “I believe you.” The kid seems incredulous at his own words, and a different kind of anger flares up in Combeferre, this time tinged with sadness and frustration for the eleven-year-old in front of him, that is surprised by basic decency.

He can feel himself gathering the boy under his wing, because it’s what he does.

“I thought so,” Gavroche is continuing. “She’s never had me meet someone before, not…formally like this. It just happens, or she’d kick me out. I met ‘Parnasse that way, but she hasn’t dated anyone in months. Not since I started living with her.” He clucks his tongue. “I knew you were different when she asked me if I wanted to meet you.”

Eponine returns then, tucking her phone into her back pocket. “Having fun, you two?” she asks, sitting on the opposite side of the couch that Combeferre’s occupying. Holding Gavroche’s eyes, Combeferre snags her waist and pulls her against him, earning a startled _oof_ and a slightly nervous glance at her brother from Eponine, but she settles into his side easily enough. Gavroche nods, still not looking away, and says, “I like him, Ep.”

“Good,” she says, letting out a laugh that they can all tell is released nervousness more than anything else. “I’m going to get a refill, you want any?”

Gavroche begs off, showing restraint, but Combeferre hands her his mug because he still has six more pages of Renaissance history to write. They both watch her as she saunters over to the counter.

“If you hurt her,” says Gavroche, breaking the silence, “I’ll gut you.”  
  
He smiles the same razor grin, and Combeferre believes him.  
  
“If I hurt her,” he replies, “I’ll let you.”  
  
They look at each other conspiratorially, and Combeferre has a feeling that they’re going to do just fine.

_Look down, and show_   
_some mercy if you can_   
_look down, look down,_   
_upon your fellow man!_

* * *

 

_The time is near_   
_So near it’s stirring_   
_the blood in their veins_

It’s nearly two hours after that the Amis burst into Bahorel and Feuilly’s apartment (the only two among them that don’t live in dorms). Everyone is laughing and several couples are attached at the hip (or the mouth, if they’re Jehan and Courfeyrac). They spill into the tiny space, separating onto various surfaces, and the alcohol begins flowing.

_And yet, beware  
Don’t let the wine go to your brains_

After a few hours, everyone is pleasantly smashed—except Grantaire, who, for the first time that virtually any of them can remember, has had no more than a single beer and has since switched to water. Enjolras, in an odd role reversal, _is_ drunk (on three beers; he’s a lightweight) and has sprawled across Grantaire’s lap, as the artist runs fingers through disheveled curls.

Combeferre, from across the room, watches them both with a small smile—not the vague smirk that’s his defense mechanism, but one of simple satisfaction at both his friends’ happiness and the apparent staying of Grantaire’s self-destruction. The cynic has been hopelessly in love with the chief for nearly a year now, and the culmination of that pining—and the apparent end of Combeferre’s role as mainstay and tissue for R—is welcome to all of them.

_I am agog!_   
_I am aghast!_   
_Is Marius in love at last?_   
_I've never heard him `ooh' and `aah'_

R, however, is disrupted with a frustrated noise when Enjolras sits up and slurs, “We need a sign! The people will come, they will rise, a new day will dawn!”

 _“Enjolras,”_ groans Bahorel. “I’m too drunk for this.”

“As am I,” pipes up Feuilly from his place, half-underneath Bahorel as a result of drunken wrestling that had, predictably, ended with the bigger man putting the smaller in a headlock. He’s used to it, though, and doesn’t seem to mind.

There’s a chorus of agreements from around the room, and Enjolras again falls prone against Grantaire, still muttering into his stomach.

“Fucking revolutionaries,” R groans quietly, but resumes his stroking with a small smile.

“ _Actually_ fucking,” says Cosette with a hiccup. Grantaire turns pink. Bahorel laughs loudly, punctuated with Feuilly’s snorts, and a bedroom door slams as Jehan drags Courfeyrac by his polka-dotted bow tie into one of the bedrooms. Feuilly yells (apparently it’s his) but merely settles back into the couch, relocating a still-laughing Bahorel to the floor with a mighty shove.

Everyone’s settling in for the night, because none of them are good to drive and it’s nearly two AM on a Saturday anyway. Bossuet, Joly and Musichetta are tangled in the corner, Bossuet already snoring and Musichetta’s hair spread across Joly’s chest; Feuilly has yanked Bahorel’s jacket off the armchair and curled up in it, longish red hair falling in his face; Bahorel has not moved from his place on the floor, one arm thrown over his eyes; and Eponine is already breathing heavily _(not_ snoring, as she’s quick to correct him) on Combeferre’s chest. Muffled groans are coming from Feuilly’s bedroom, and Grantaire’s eyes are looking droopy to match his boyfriend who’s passed out on top of him.

_Is this simply a game_   
_For rich young boys to play?_   
_The color of the world_   
_Is changing day by day…_

The apartment falls quiet as the group drops into sleep, exhausted by the day and the exhilaration that has filled them.

_Red_   
_The blood of angry men_   
_Black_   
_The dark of ages past_   
_Red_   
_The world about to dawn_   
_Black_   
_The night that ends at last!_

(about six hours later)

“EVERYBODY WAKE UP!”

“Shut _up,_ Enjolras!”

“It’s _eight in the fucking morning!”_

_“It’s eight in the fucking morning in MY APARTMENT!”_

“What?” Courfeyrac pokes his head blearily out the bedroom door, blinking at Enjolras who is, completely out of character, _jumping up and down_ while looking at his phone.

He is startled temporarily by a shoe whizzing past his ear, followed by an “ _Ouch!_ ‘Ferre!”

“Sorry, Nina!”

“You call her… _”_

“Can everyone _shut up_ and listen for a second!” There’s Enjolras again, their chief who can hold them all spellbound with a word. His face is lit up from within, and in that moment Combeferre understands, as he always does, how Grantaire can literally worship that face. If Combeferre was anything other than straight, he probably would as well.

“Professor Lamarque heard my speech! She wants to come to our next meeting!”

_Had you been there tonight_   
_You might also have known_   
_How the world may be changed_   
_In just one burst of light!_

They all stare, dumbfounded. Lamarque is the draconian head of the Political Science department, who looks like Judi Dench and has reduced several graduate students to tears. Enjolras is, of course, in love with her, and she’s technically their faculty sponsor. However, she’s never taken more of an interest than that, and the fact that she’s texted Enjolras before eight on a Saturday means she was rather impressed.

_Red  
I feel my soul on fire_

“Congratulations, Enjolras!” Jehan chirps from his place behind Courfeyrac.

“Yes, congratulations,” Feuilly mumbles. “Now everyone shut up or go home, because this is _my apartment_ and I want to _sleep._ We’re all very happy for you, Enjolras, but _I have not slept properly in two days.”_

“Right,” says Enjolras, looking slightly chagrined—as do they all; Feuilly works insane shifts at his three jobs to muster up enough money to pay rent and send home to his mother, and he guards his sleep as jealously as Combeferre does.

_I do not doubt you mean it well  
But now there is a higher call!_

Enjolras seats himself at the table, still rocking back and forth in excitement, and Grantaire rolls to his feet, somehow the least hungover of the bunch, to make breakfast. Combeferre, after apologizing profusely to his girlfriend for landing her on the ground, can sleep no longer, so he moves to the kitchenette to help. He lays a hand on his friend’s shoulder on the way by, and murmurs, “Congratulations, Enjolras.”

 _The time is near!_  
Let us welcome it gladly with courage and cheer  
Let us take to the streets with no doubt in our hearts  
  
The chief’s hair is a halo of frizzy dishevelment, and his morning breath is atrocious, but the lit-from-within aura still surrounds him as he types furiously on his phone. “It’s happening, Combeferre,” he says, a little breathlessly. “It’s happening. For all of us.”

_With a jubilant shout  
They will come one and all_

 

 

“It is,” Combeferre agrees, and feels the tiny spark that was lit when he first met this impossibly argumentative boy, and that has been banked as he pursues other avenues, light again in his stomach. “It is.”

_They will come when we call!_

* * *

 

_Will you join in our crusade_   
_Who will be strong and stand with me?_   
_Beyond the barricade_   
_Is there a world you long to see?_

The first meeting at the Musain after the rally, Enjolras is pacing back and forth until you can almost see the wear in the floor. Combeferre, for once, is no better, murmuring platitudes at Enjolras to calm down but truly as jittery as his friend. Jehan’s nails are bitten to the quick, and he’s written Langston Hughes up the forearms of Feuilly, Courfeyrac, and Bossuet and is now working on Bahorel. Joly is late, rushing in only ten minutes before it’s scheduled to start, and Enjolras nearly shouts from nervous energy before Grantaire squeezes his shoulders. Grantaire simply looks like he needs a drink, as does Courfeyrac; the two of them have been trying to control their leader’s nervousness for the last three days.

When the clock ticks over onto the six o’clock hour, Enjolras sits down with a thump. “She’s not coming.”

“Yes, she is,” soothes Combeferre, accepting his fifth cup of coffee in the last hour from Eponine, who offered to take this shift at the Musain for exactly this reason. (Starting with the third, he’s been drinking decaf.)

“No, she _isn’t._ She’s _never_ late to lectures, she’s never late to _anything,_ she hates late people.”

“Enjolras, calm down,” says Feuilly, scrubbing a hand over his face. Underneath his fingernails is crusted with oil; he’s just come from work, and usually would not have come at all, but he’s shown up to support Enjolras. “She’ll come or she won’t, and you know she will.”

“And if she doesn’t, she’s crazy,” chirps Jehan. “You’re amazing, and you’re _right_. We’re doing real good here, and she saw that. Don’t worry,” he finished.

“But—“

“ _No,_ ” says Feuilly again, more forcefully. “Enjolras, she’ll come. And if she doesn’t, it _doesn’t matter._ Because we don’t need her. We’re doing good here. We’ll change the world, and if _she_ wants to be part of it she’ll be here. We should start.”

Jehan stands up abruptly. “The plight of the people waits not for us, why should it for anyone?”

“They’re right. We’re here for the people who need us, not for approval.” Bahorel—a moment of insight, which is surprising sometimes from such a big man but is also why they keep him around.

“Start, Enjolras.” Feuilly, usually quiet, will not be denied. “The people are waiting.”

_Do you hear the people sing?  
Singing a song of angry men?_

So Enjolras does.

Professor Lamarque enters the café about fifteen minutes later, but no one except Eponine, at the coffee counter, notices. The Amis are uptaken in discussion, Enjolras standing on a chair, practicing his rhetoric at ever-acerbic Grantaire, Combeferre and Feuilly arguing over a fundraising spreadsheet, Bahorel, Courfeyrac and Jehan designing flyers, and Bossuet and Joly distributing the umpteenth round of coffee. Her eyebrows reach nearly her hairline, but she simply orders a large black coffee (Eponine likes her already, she understands table rent and tips well) and moves towards Enjolras. He alights with only slightly less grace than usual, and greets her with a minimum of fangirling. She then takes a seat in the corner and the others quiet down with some shushing, then Enjolras begins to speak in earnest.  
  
It is the music of a people  
Who will not be slaves again!

Lamarque’s eyebrows, having returned to normal, reach her hairline for the second time that evening. Enjolras is in top form, pontificating on par with Kennedy or Marc Antony or Mandela. The Amis are completely ignoring their newest addition, spellbound in spite of themselves by their chief. They all know the power of Enjolras’s voice, but are held still anyway, because the magic that washes over them when he speaks doesn’t go away or get old.

That first night, the iron lady gets a taste of what they have all known for two years now—that Enjolras is something special, an orator of the highest order, that could lead men into battle and death with only a word.

_When the beating of your heart  
Echoes the beating of the drums_

 

 

Professor Lamarque does not come to every meeting after that, but she’s there a good half the time, and she is never late again.  
  
 _There is a life about to start_  
 _When tomorrow comes!_

* * *

 

_This change,  
Can people really fall in love so fast?_

 “Oh, Eponine, Marius really _is_ a sweetheart. He took me to a show on Friday, and he let slip he’s already got plans for Valentine’s Day. Imagine! A month in advance! He’s just so sweet,” Cosette squeals, falling back onto her bed with a thump _._

Eponine bites back a sarcastic retort, choosing instead to highlight another passage of _Paradise Lost._ At this point, her crush on Marius is a humorously-remembered dream and Cosette and she are friends in addition to just roommates, but the smaller girl can still unsettlingly resemble a cake sometimes—frothy, sugary, nearly unbearably sweet and so full of cuteness that it’s nearly revolting. It’s a bad analogy, though, because Cosette’s cake hides bitter chocolate sheathed in steel. Making Cosette angry is not something she’s ever interested in doing, because the little blonde is a closet badass. She practices judo with Jehan—a black belt—three times a week, and Eponine would rather have her roommate in a bar fight than anyone else except maybe Bahorel.

As it is, though, Eponine _knows_ that Cosette and Marius are meant to be, and can even acknowledge how adorable they are, but at some point it just gets ridiculous.

However, she enjoys Cosette’s continued friendship, in addition to her life, so instead of staying something cutting, she simply turns the page and says, reaching for her cell phone,

“That’s adorable.”

_In my life_   
_There are so many questions and answers_   
_That somehow seemed wrong_

Unbeknownst to the two women in their dorm room, their respective boyfriends are having a similar discussion while sitting in the Café Musain.

“You know, Combeferre, I think I could actually _like_ Reese Witherspoon. Cosette’s been telling me about the feminist undertones in _Legally Blonde,_ and we might be watching _Sweet Home Alabama_ next week. But, honestly,” the younger man finishes dreamily, “it makes her happy, so I’d watch it anyway. She’s just…she’s so lovely.”

Now, Combeferre is a patient man by any stretch of the imagination, and now that he has a girlfriend of his own he can even empathize with the fuzzy, fluttery feelings that Marius professes to feeling when he sees Cosette—he does, to his chagrin, experience the same with Eponine. And Marius and Cosette _are_ adorable. He’s also, though he’d never admit it even to himself, rather glad that Marius is so blissfully happy with Eponine’s roommate, because it keeps his attention squarely off Eponine herself. Combeferre knows the gem that he’s got, and he’s perfectly happy to have Marius blind to it as long as possible. Eponine hasn’t looked at Marius with longing in her eyes since before she started dating Combeferre, but if Combeferre has never been jealous of kisses and affection before he guards them now, because he’s crazy about Eponine and isn’t interested in losing her.

_In my life_   
_There are times I will catch_   
_In the silence the sigh of a faraway song_

However, the trade-off is listening to Marius wax eloquent about Cosette’s eyebrows on a regular basis. Yes, they are in love; yes, all the Amis are happy for them; _no,_ they do not want to hear about it at all hours of the day. His phone buzzes; speak of the devil.

_Just a whisper away  
Waiting for me_

**Eponine:** So i might throw something at cosette

He grins, still half-listening to Marius, and shoots back:

 **Ferre:** you too? Marius is talking about the feminist implications of Reese Witherspoon.

 **Eponine:** WHAT. ARE THEY THE SAME PERSON

 **Ferre:** At this point? Basically.

 **Eponine:** Ferre i’m scared

 **Eponine:** just promise me we’ll never be that couple

 **Ferre:** Enjolras would kill me.

**Eponine: <3  \^_^/**

“…and, Combeferre, are you listening?”

“Well, _I’m_ not,” grouses Grantaire. “Marius. Shut. Up.”

He says that, but considering the amount of rhetoric Combeferre’s received about a certain “Greek god”, the cynic has no leg to stand on, and he knows it. He is thus quieted with a raised eyebrow from Combeferre and a squeeze to his shoulder from Enjolras.  
  
 _In my life_  
 _I'm no longer alone now,_

“No, it’s fine, Marius,” says Combeferre smoothly. Perhaps Cosette wouldn’t have been his chosen topic of the evening, but it makes Marius happy, and if Marius is happy with Cosette he won’t look elsewhere.

_the love in my life  
Is so near_

Also, the fact that he’s texting his own girlfriend under the table with a slightly besotted tinge that he _knows_ Courfeyrac notices to his usual half-smile renders him ineligible to shut anyone else up about their romantic pursuits.

 **Ferre:** <3

 

 

“What were you saying about Reese Witherspoon?”

* * *

 

_A heart full of love_

It’s not very often that Combeferre and Eponine get time to themselves. He lives with Courfeyrac and ostensibly Enjolras (though he finds himself alternately short and extra a roommate by turns, now that Enjolras and Grantaire are a couple.) She lives with Cosette, obviously, and Gavroche when he (entirely illegally) crashes in their dorm after a fight with his foster parents.

_A heart full of song_

Moving into their junior year, not much is going to change; they’re both looking into moving off-campus, but Combeferre would have the same roommates and Eponine will probably not follow through, since her scholarships give her a good deal on room and board at the university. Thus, time alone is a precious commodity, and is not to be wasted when it does arise.

As soon as the door slams shut on Courf’s retreating back, nearly bodily shoved into the hallway by Eponine, Combeferre’s pushed her up against the door and is kissing her relentlessly, only begrudgingly pulling back at intervals to let them both breathe. His hands frame her face, one cupping nearly the whole of her jaw and the other braced against the door by her ear as her short nails scrabble along his neck, looking for purchase as she wraps her knees around his hips. His hand on her head moves to under her thigh, and she flips them around so it is instead he who is against the door.

They both ignore the whoop of laughter from the hallway.

With that, the kiss becomes more leisurely if no less heated. She sighs against his mouth, and he mutters prayers and entreaties and obscenities into hers, and his hand strokes down her back pulling her ponytail loose. His eyes spark behind thick glasses, and she pulls the lenses off to see them better as she gropes with the other hand for the light switch.

After that, the only sensations are tactile, stubble against smooth skin and hair wrapped around fingers and a slow but consumptive heat.

They lie together after, her hair splayed across his chest as he twines it through his fingers, other arm wrapped around her waist as she pulls the covers up and over them both. They say little, merely basking in each other’s presence.

She jumps from simple surprise when he breaks the silence, and misses what he actually says. “Hmm?”

He chuckles low, fingers still twining infinitely through her hair, and she relishes the dark vibrations under her cheekbone. “I said, I love you.”

Her unconscious movement is still from surprise this time, but a different kind, one that disrupts the rapport and causes his fingertips to go still.

_I'm doing everything all wrong  
Oh God, for shame_

She says nothing for a long minute, waiting for her stomach to roil and her lungs to freeze up, because this is _Combeferre_ and he doesn’t beat around the bush, and he wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it—but it’s surely impossible anyway because she couldn’t _possibly_ be so lucky?

But nothing happens—her stomach stays still, her breathing isn’t obstructed, and Combeferre’s resumed twirling her hair as he waits for a reply. He doesn’t expect her to say it back, she’s pretty sure; but he would consider it his duty to tell _her_ if he felt that way, because Combeferre is genuine and honest and not in the habit of not being open. She’d assumed that that much openness, that much pressure, would make her nauseous and dizzy and send her spiraling into panic; but it _doesn’t._

_I don’t know what to say--  
Then make no sound!_

Instead, there is simply a warm feeling in her stomach, an increased spark where their skin touches, and a golden euphoria that spreads through her brain like the finest champagne. _I love you._ He’s said it, and he’s meant it, and it might be the most beautiful thing she’s ever heard.

_I am lost  
I am found_

But she can’t put all what she’s feeling into words—that’s Enjolras’s job, or Jehan’s, because Eponine shows by _doing_ and _being_ rather than _saying._

So she settles for Combeferre’s own words, or perhaps not his but those of a thousand years of tradition.

_A heart full of love  
A heart full of you_

“I love you, too.”

She can nearly hear the grin that splits his face, and she giggles giddily into his chest as he squeezes her hip where his hand lies. “I love you, Combeferre.”

_For it isn’t a dream_

They fall asleep like that, wrapped up in each other and surrounded by golden and bubbles and warmth, for once sure of everything because they love each other.

Nothing else matters.

 

 

_Not a dream after all_

* * *

 

_Who is this hussy?_

When Combeferre pokes his head into Eponine and Cosette’s shared dorm room, as he has a hundred times before, he’s nearly set back on his heels by the animosity that emanates from it. It’s a nearly tangible thing, a thick miasma that is surprising in both its magnitude and its setting—Eponine and Cosette have their squabbles, but nothing like this. Worried, he moves farther into the room, only to see Cosette on her bed, laptop on her knees. She smiles ruefully at him and gestures with her head to the room’s other occupants, both seated on the room’s other bed. Eponine is cross-legged in her usual sleepwear, hair escaping its braid, as Gavroche cuddles into her side with one of her slim arms wrapped around him protectively and his fingers clenched in the fabric of her sweatpants.

The peaceful picture is belied, however, by the tension in Eponine’s arms, the tightness with which Gavroche’s fingers are wrapped in Eponine’s clothes, and the look on Eponine’s face as she hisses into the phone at her ear. Gavroche is uncharacteristically solemn, almost drawn, and looks more worried than any twelve-year-old has a right to. Eponine’s voice is calm as of yet, but her face is that of an Amazon, angry and proud and righteous.

_Don't interfere_   
_You've got some gall_   
_Take care, young miss,_   
_You've got a lot to say_

“Inspector Javert,” she says tightly, “my brother is here because his foster mother _struck_ him. I will not release him into your custody until I see proof that he has been transferred.”

She listens for a moment, and Combeferre can hear her teeth grinding. “I’m aware of that, Inspector,” she says, as Combeferre crosses to her desk, flips the chair around, and straddles it—uncharacteristically blasé, but perhaps that’s what the room needs right now—“but the fact remains that I don’t give a flying _fuck_ what you think is best for my brother. I will _not_ return him to a home that is known to be abusive, and he will stay with me until you can prove to me that he will be safe. And no, your word is not good enough.”

Pause again, but shorter. “That’s the plan, Inspector, but not until I have a place of my own.”

Another pause, this one longer.

“Inspector Javert, I will do what is needed to keep my brother safe.”

“Then tell the social worker to start the paperwork _today,”_ she shouts, “because I will _never_ let my brother be taken care of by the likes of you!” With that, she throws the phone into the bed, and Gavroche shifts, if possible, closer to her. Her hand, previously occupied with the cell phone, falls to Gavroche’s hair and strokes, a motherly motion.

“Eponine,” says Combeferre softly, exchanging shocked looks with Cosette, “what just happened?”

“I’m not sure,” she replies, staring down at her brother as he stares back, brown and blue eyes meeting over identical noses and chins. “I think I may have just adopted Gavroche.”

_It was your cry sent them away  
Once more 'Ponine saving the day_

Gavroche sits up with a cry, and his eyes are sparkling more than Combeferre’s ever seen. “Ep, _really?”_

“Yes, Gavroche,” whispers Eponine, “Really.”

The little boy (because he really is, however street-hardened he may be) lets out a cry of strangled joy and launches into her, burying his face in her chest and wrapping his gangly arms around her.

Watching them, Combeferre’s heart hurts. It hurts for this young boy, who is so overjoyed by the simplest prospect of living with someone who loves him; for the girl he loves, who’s staring over her brother’s head, over even his own, as she contemplates what she’s just taken on. As he watches her fingers ghost over Gavroche’s head, however, he knows she could have done nothing else.

“Well, then,” says Cosette from her place, “I suppose I ought to start looking at apartments.”

The grateful look that Eponine shoots to her roommate—the girl she’d first envied, then disliked, then kissed and finally bonded with—is like a punch to Combeferre’s gut. He crosses to Eponine’s bed and kneels by it, nearly eye level to her as she’s seated, and covers the hand that isn’t on Gavroche’s head—and is shaking, ever so slightly, with residual anger and adrenaline and very-present fear—with his own, entangling her fingers in his. He leans forward till their foreheads touch, and they breathe together over the little boy in her arms, and her shaking slowly stills.

They will do this _together,_ and the beauty of it is that they know it without speaking. They are a unit, now, and even this chosen path that gets ever harder for both of them will never lack for company.

And if Cosette chooses this moment to snap a photo for the wedding album she sees in the future, neither of them—none of them—notice.

 

 

_Hurry, Cosette, it's time to close another door  
And live another day!_

* * *

 

_On my own_   
_Pretending he’s beside me_   
_All alone_   
_I walk with him ‘til morning_

Combeferre gets the news from his mother, added as an afterthought: _P.S., Zachary dear, your old nanny Annette passed away last week. Do send condolences to the family, there’s a good boy._

He is frozen for nearly a day, says absolutely nothing, but Enjolras is busy studying for finals and Courf’s at home, so neither of them notice the difference in the silence, and none of the rest are really able to tell when his silence is self- or outwardly imposed.

It’s only the next day that Eponine sees him, and even _she_ doesn’t notice, what with the paperwork for Gavroche’s adoption getting mixed up with the rent contract, and she’s ranting about how she’s going to pay Dr. Fauchelevent back on his rent advance when she realizes that Combeferre hasn’t said a word since she’s arrived. She pauses, takes a breath, and begins to tally all the things he hasn’t done since they’ve met today; he hasn’t wrapped his hands around her waist, hasn’t left his hand open on his knee (an invitation for her to sit), he hasn’t asked her about her day or offered advice or even acknowledgements of what she’s saying. He isn’t even seated on his usual couch, instead having claimed a straight-backed chair next to a four-top in the darkest alcove of the whole shop. With anyone else, she’d chalk it up to exhaustion or apathy, but this is _Combeferre_ and he doesn’t do apathy, and exhaustion has never stopped him before.

She sets down the mess of half-sorted paper she’s holding and moves chairs, directly across the table from him. His coffee has gone untouched, cooling rapidly on the table, and it’s then she _knows,_ without a doubt, that something has gone terribly, catastrophically wrong.

“ _Combeferre.”_ Her voice is insistent. “What’s wrong?” He will not meet her eyes, and it terrifies her. He may not be expressive, may not choose to wear his heart on his sleeve as Grantaire or Courfeyrac or even Enjolras does, but he has never hidden from her, never avoided her gaze, and that he’s doing it now frightens her more than she’d ever admit.

 _“Combeferre,”_ she repeats, more forcefully, wraps her hand around his jaw, and tugs. The contrast of her comparatively tiny brown hand against the paleness and golden stubble (another warning sign; he’s usually meticulous about his shaving) of his chin is striking, something Grantaire would like to capture in ink or oils; but it’s his eyes, eyes usually calm as water, occasionally stormy, that hold her—as they always do. They are frozen now, dull, but overlaid with a sheen of tears. Combeferre is holding back _tears,_ and the air leaves her lungs like she’s been punched.

“She’s dead, Nina,” he whispers.

 _“What_? Who?”

His eyes, balanced on a knife’s edge of numbness and pain, finally tip on the scale.

“My mother,” he says, and his voice cracks on the last syllable as it drops into a sob.

_In the darkness_   
_I feel his arms around me_   
_And when I lose my way I close my eyes_   
_And he has found me_

He leans forward on his elbows and weeps, harsh, wracking sobs that chill her to the core, as she comes around the edge of the table and wraps her arms around him, not quite long enough to fully engulf his shoulders.

“Combeferre, Combeferre, I’m so sorry.” It’s not enough, and she knows it. She doesn’t know what could be; this is ten times worse than the few times that Gavroche has cried because he’s a _kid_ and, yeah, he cries sometimes. But Combeferre is a grown man and not given to overt displays, so in a year and a half of dating she’s never seen him cry at anything other than _Moulin Rouge_. The fact remains, however, that he’s shaking underneath her, and she squeezes tighter in the vain hope that it will help at all.

“Shhh, shh,” she murmurs—platitudes, but comforting ones, ones she recognizes and learned how to receive and give from Combeferre himself. “You’re all right.” She treats him like she has Gavroche, the few times he’s needed it, and perhaps it’s not exactly what he needs but it’s what she knows how to do.

His fist loosens, hand falling open like it’s just too exhausting to stay clenched, as his sobs begin to abate. She can feel him breathing deeply underneath her, reaching vainly for the calm that defines him, and she can’t describe the relief that comes when one of his hands comes up to wrap around her forearm. This, at least, has not changed. Perhaps it even helped.

As the tears subside, he heaves a sigh, heavy and explosive and laden with residual tears, then turns in his chair—an invitation and a request. She lets him wrap his arms around her waist and fall forward, forehead resting in her clavicle, and seats herself on his knee. Her hands have moved from his shoulders to his hair, and she strokes the down at the nape of his neck as he continues to breathe deep.

They probably look odd, but it’s a Tuesday evening and Madame Hucheloup is carefully rearranging the tea supplies, specifically not looking at them. The only other patrons are around the corner of the counter, and if they’ve noticed what’s happening in the alcove they haven’t said anything.

“Not my mother. My nanny. Annette.” He’s a little hard to hear with his face still against her collarbone, and his lips tickle a little as they move, brushing her skin, but he’s clear enough to confuse her.

“She raised me, though. Till I was twelve. My dad fired her the day after my twelfth birthday—said I didn’t need her anymore. I cried, cried so hard when she left. I looked for her, but—I could never find a forwarding address, a phone number, nothing. I thought she’d abandoned me, and I was so _angry,_ so I stopped looking, oh God, oh _God—_ “

“Combeferre!” Her fingers dig into his scalp, stemming the flow of words that are not heading in a direction she likes. “This is _not your fault.”_ She leans back, meeting his eyes that are still glassy but not dull anymore. They’re sharp instead, ragged and raw with pain that she doesn’t recognize and that frightens her. “It isn’t your fault,” she repeats weakly. “You were twelve.”

“I could have done something,” he protests, “ _something,_ I could have tried harder—“

_And I know it’s only in my mind_   
_That I’m talking to myself and not to him_   
_And although I know that he is blind--_   
_Still I say ‘there’s a way for us’!_

“I’ve never known you to try anything less than your hardest.” She resumes her rubbing but holds his gaze. “You’re not like that. You loved her, and I’m sure she knew that.” She’s not helping. She can feel it, because she doesn’t know what it’s like to lose a parent—or rather, she doesn’t know what it’s like to hurt after losing a parent. When hers had finally cleared the city, the only thing she’d felt was abject relief that she wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore, that she could look after Gavroche and go to college in peace. “I’m so sorry.”

His eyes close, lashes wet as they lay along his cheek. “I miss her.”

That hurts, more than anything else. This naked hurt, this flash of a _boy_ who’s now had to lose the only person who ever really parented him not once, but _twice._ Her heart aches for the little boy then and the man now, the guide who’s spent so much time taking care of other people and is abjectly asking for her help now.

Eponine Thenardier has been abandoned by her mother, beaten by her father, nearly molested by multiple people, is effectively raising her brother by herself, has a drug-addicted sister and has nearly died from an overdose herself.

Watching the tears, silent now, tracing down his cheeks, is one of the most painful experiences she’s ever had.

“I love you,” she breathes. It’s not enough, it _can’t_ be, but it’s all she’s got.

He whispers brokenly, “I know.”

Suddenly, she’s crying too.

_I love him, but when the night is over_   
_He is gone—the river’s just a river_   
_Without him, the world around me changes_

They go to the funeral together—he in his only suit, she in a black dress borrowed from Cosette. Her hand nearly goes numb from how tightly he’s clutching it, but she doesn’t wiggle away even as her fingertips go white.

They meet Annette’s children for the first time. One, John, is only a year older than Combeferre, and his gaze is guarded as Combeferre haltingly greets him. It opens, though, as Combeferre recounts how loving John’s mother was, and the conversation ends with the a Roman handshake, the two men who could have been siblings in another world—who _did_ share a mother, for all intents and purposes—gripping each other’s forearms in the universal gesture of brotherhood. They are invited to the family’s house after the ceremony, but Eponine declines for them both, because Combeferre’s face is tense and drawn with pain and exhaustion—he’s slept even less than usual in the days leading up to this—and at her urging he runs a trembling hand over the tombstone again and moves away.

She tucks herself into him as they move away, her heels sinking into the wet grass, and he wraps his hand around her upper arm, supporting her.  
  
 _The trees are bare and everywhere_  
 _The streets are full of strangers!_

“Are you all right?” She knows he isn’t, but she can’t think of anything else to say.

 

“I will be,” he says heavily, and she folds into him more closely.

_I love him, I love him  
But only on my own_

* * *

 

_One day more_  
 _Another day, another destiny_  
  
“Listen, everyone!”

Enjolras is on a table. Again.

“Professor Lamarque has authorized a marriage-rights rally on campus!”

“That’s wonderful!” says Cosette, from her seat next to Marius. “When?”

“The beginning of next school year,” he replies, “Our senior year, the year when we’ll pull all of our university together under one banner! It’s time that the people—every student—comes together to create a better world!”

“I’ll drink to that!” roars Bahorel, and does in concert with Grantaire.

“We’ve already started getting the proper permits—“ says Enjolras, with a glance at Combeferre, who nods—“and have contacted some speakers from GLSEN—“ another nod from Feuilly.

“From now till November,” the chief says grandly, “this is our goal. _This_ must be perfect.”

“Very nice,” grumbles Joly, “except Combeferre and I are applying for medical school this summer. And November really is a terrible time for illnesses, I’ll probably catch pneumonia or bronchitis—”

Bossuet covers his boyfriend’s hand. “We’ll manage.”

The look Joly shoots him is pure sap, and they’re in danger of having a Moment until Feuilly proclaims loudly, “what’s next on the agenda, Enjolras?”

It’s no use—Enjolras himself is having a Moment with Grantaire, who’s managed to get him off his table and is murmuring into his ear. Enjolras looks thunderstruck, then turns a deep red and pulls away, with a dirty look at Grantaire. The cynic only laughs and lifts his beer to his mouth. He follows the movement, glancing out from under his lashes, as Enjolras climbs back onto the chair. Eponine rolls her eyes, but is poked by Combeferre—whose lap she’s currently claimed as he taps away on a keyboard with one hand—and subsides before she can shoot something cutting about the current state of adorable that pervades the Musain.

_I did not live until today  
How can I live when we are parted?_

Hell, the entire Café seems paired off, Bossuet with Joly, Enjolras with Grantaire, Eponine with Combeferre, and Courfeyrac with Jehan. Feuilly and Bahorel exchange glances—it’s going to be one of _those_ meetings, if neither of them do something.

“Enjolras, why don’t you read us your notes for the healthcare speech next week?”

“Feuilly, _shut up!”_ growls Bossuet, as fierce as he ever gets. “It is _summer,_ my boyfriend’s finals are over, my girlfriend will be here in ten minutes, and the sun is shining!”

“Indeed, the sun is shining!” Jehan smiles. “GREAT is the sun, and wide he goes/Through empty heaven without repose;/And in the blue and glowing days/More thick than rain he showers—“ He’s yanked into Courfeyrac’s lap with a merry laugh, but the poetry stops as his mouth is otherwise occupied.

Combeferre laughs, a deep laugh from his stomach that vibrates against Eponine’s hands, and closes his computer. “You’re fighting a losing battle, Feuilly.” The smaller man groans as he sees Combeferre nuzzle Eponine’s shoulder, uncharacteristically affectionate, and releases tension by punching Bahorel in the arm.

Big mistake. It degenerates into a wrestling match in which the mechanic is hopelessly outmatched and that ends with Bahorel putting Feuilly into a headlock. Feuilly is scrappy, though, born from a childhood in inner-city Boston, and with a dive for Bahorel’s ticklish spots (his sides) extricates himself and exacts revenge. It ends with Bahorel on his stomach, breathing hard, while Feuilly kneels on his back, holding Bahorel’s arms in a twist behind him and his hair a ginger halo.

“All right, all right, uncle, uncle!”

Feuilly, mollified, lets Bahorel up—his second mistake of the day, as Bahorel is scrappy himself, and the wrestling begins anew. This time, though, they roll into a coffee table, and the resulting screech brings Madame Hucheloup out from the office behind the counter.

 _“Sacrebleu!_ You are all children, silly boys! This is a coffeeshop, not a park!” Her French accent gets heavier with every syllable. “Bahorel, Feuilly—“ they both look instantly contrite. She’s apparently the only one to pronounce their names exactly correctly, and the fact that they are addicted to her sugar cookies does not help their worship of the frightening French lady—“control yourselves, or _leave my shop!”_

They separate immediately, though not without a ruffling of hair from Bahorel and a last halfhearted swing from Feuilly. Feuilly seats himself instead at Eponine and Combeferre’s feet, long legs (all the Amis are absurdly tall, so even though Feuilly is six feet he doesn’t look it) folded underneath him as he pokes Combeferre’s leg.

“’Ferre, did you ever finish the Modrzewski I gave you?”

“ _On the Penalty for Manslaughter?_ I did,” Combeferre replies over Eponine’s shoulder. “I quite enjoyed it, though I can’t pretend to know much about the Polish politics of the time.”

“Oh, no worries. If you liked it, I’ve got some great Mackiewitz, or maybe some Staszic—“

And he’s off, brown eyes lit up and hands moving as he talks about great Polish Renaissance writers and the political changes in Eastern Europe. Perhaps it’s odd that he’s so passionate about such an esoteric topic, but since Combeferre reads Foucalt for fun, it’s not like he can judge. Not that they ever do; this group’s strength is in that it is eclectic. Enjolras may be the leader that guides them through the darkness, but Combeferre knows that without him for glue, Courfeyrac for light, Jehan for poetry, Joly for fretting, Bossuet for steadiness, Feuilly for temperance and Bahorel for energy, and, yes, Grantaire for pessimism, they would not be as effective as they are. Perhaps they would not be friends at all.

_When our ranks begin to form  
Will you take your place with me?_

He looks over Eponine’s head to see Grantaire leaning his head on Enjolras’s shoulder, and the way the blond man has moved to accommodate his boyfriend speaks to practice in this position.

He lets his gaze slide away and sees Inspector Javert outside, peering through the coffee shop window until he sees Eponine. The man’s eyes under his hat (honestly, does he think he’s in a ‘40s gangster movie?) are like polished pebbles, small and beady and shiny but containing no real depth. He nudges Eponine off his lap and gestures with his head as the bell above the door jangles.

 _“Miss_ Thénardier? I have the adoption paperwork for your brother.” The man places great emphasis on the unmarried signifier, skating over Combeferre and his recently vacated lap with his eyes, then gazing at Eponine with an odd mixture of pity and disdain.

“This is highly irregular, Inspector,” says Eponine. “Shouldn’t I be speaking to the social worker?”

“I volunteered,” he returns stiffly. “I wished to see the kind of environment Gavin…”

“Gavroche…”

“Your brother would be living in.” The disdain is still there, but the pity has dropped from his voice, as he takes stock of the coffee shop--crowded with hipsters and college students; Eponine—who’s still got her name tag and all-black barista ensemble on; and specifically Combeferre’s corner, where he sits surrounded by three blatantly gay couples (further complicated by Musichetta’s arrival and enthusiastic greeting to her “boys”) and the empty space where Combeferre sits, only recently vacated. Even Cosette and Marius, doing nothing more offensive than cuddling, seem to offend this man, with his ramrod back and shallow eyes. Perhaps it is because they are in love.

Love does not seem to be something Inspector Javert is familiar with.

_One more day to revolution,  
We will nip it in the bud!_

Eponine takes the papers quickly, promising to get them notarized the next day, and with a last scathing stare around the Café, Javert leaves like he’s afraid he’ll catch something. No one notices except Combeferre and Eponine. They have better things to do.

Eponine returns to him, papers in hand, and curls back up on the couch. She should not let Javert bother her, and she knows it. He’s narrow-minded at best, bigoted at worst, and since he’s outside the foster care system what he thinks doesn’t matter legally either. But she can’t shake a niggling feeling of shame.

Combeferre has returned to his laptop, typing quickly what looks like a Robespierre paper, but even as he writes of politics and bastards and guillotines he slows and looks at her fondly. “The sun is shining, Eponine. Remember?”

“Yeah.” All of a sudden she’s tired. Tired from work, tired from the near-constant worrying over the past two weeks about rent and paperwork and legalese, tired of being judged by small-minded people and tired of having to smile and shut up at people who tell her she is lacking but offer no advice for improvement.

_Most of them are goners  
So they won't miss much!_

Combeferre is talking, though, and so she drags herself out of her little pity party and listens.

“Thy beams, so reverend and strong/Why shouldst thou think?/I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,/But that I would not lose her sight so long,” he murmurs, leaving his computer aside for good. “Let’s go get lunch, Eponine.”

It’s things like that that remind her how much she loves this man.

They bid goodbye to the now-stagnant meeting that’s really at this point just an gathering of inwardly absorbed couples and leave, Combeferre gathering his messenger bag and she her backpack. They intertwine fingers as they step into the sun. The light glints off Combeferre’s glasses and hair, and reveals Eponine’s black hair to actually be a dark chocolate brown.

_One day to a new beginning  
Every man will be a king_

“Everything is going to be all right, Nina.” He says it conversationally, as if he’s discussing the sunshine or where they should eat.

It’s a lie, or perhaps simply not an entire truth. He knows nothing of the sort. Eponine is only twenty-one—how can she handle a child? He selfishly wonders if parenting Gavroche will take her away from him, and he hates himself for it but can’t make it go away. Nor can he tell her, because it’s not a choice he’d ever ask of her.

(He knows which one she’d choose, and it isn’t him.) He shoves the thought away; it’s a useless, poisonous one, that has no place in the sunshine.

“I believe you,” she replies, and he knows as she says it that he isn’t the only one telling half-truths today. She realizes it too, as she amends, “I believe _in_ you.”

“And I believe in you, Nina.” He squeezes her hand. “Tomorrow, Gavroche will move into your new apartment, your pay raise at the Musain will go into effect, school will be out for good—Courfeyrac’s invited us to a party at Jehan’s parents’, by the way—and we’ll have another day.”

“Another day,” she says wryly. “Another day to mess up.”

“Another day to succeed,” he counters.

“Another day to fall.”

“Another day to climb.”

“Another day to live,” she acquiesces.

“Another day to love.” His voice is quiet, but his eyes find hers, pale and intense.

She pulls him down into a searing kiss, standing on a street corner in Amherst in May. It’s a movie moment, a picture’s moment; one that is shamelessly taken advantage of by a less-occupied-than-assumed Cosette through the coffeeshop window.

“Another day to love,” she repeats, when they finally pause for air. She laughs. “God, that’s cheesy.”

“It really is,” he says ruefully, “but does that make it less true?”

“I suppose not.” Her voice is thoughtful.

“Is the sentimentality or prefabrication of the statement indicative of its merit?”

“Thank you, _Enjolras.”_ She takes his hand again. “I’m hungry.”

“My lady,” he murmurs, bowing with a careless grace that would not be out of place in the 19th century. “As you command.”

They saunter off down the street, not sure of what is ahead.

_Tomorrow we’ll discover  
What our God in Heaven has in store_

Right now it doesn’t matter.  
  
 _One more dawn--_  
 _One more day--_  
 _One day more!_

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. So...not sure what happened here, but I've now got a whole other act to write, it looks like. That...might be a while in coming, but IT WILL HAPPEN.
> 
> A thousand thank yous to opabine and got_spunk for their help with editing. 
> 
> As always, if you want me to tag something else or in a different way, let me know!
> 
> If you want, come talk to me at goldfishtobleroneandamitie.tumblr.com; everyone's welcome. 
> 
> -gfaa


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